We Are Busy Bodies
New Track: Sensational 70’s Latin jazz – the ‘We Are Busy Bodies’ label announce twin album reissues from the stellar Virgilio Armas.
Where do they find them? Those intrepid sound seekers at We Are Busy Bodies look set to keep on delivering. Following their bountiful dig through the ‘As-Shams‘ back catalogue of seminal South African jazz, the Toronto based label have switched their attention momentarily to the equally hip Venezuelan seventies scene. The result of these new …
Premiere – Affiliate Links reveals ‘Walk on Water’ from debut album ‘Enough Light’ – punchy power pop from a fresh perspective.
You may have already caught ‘Baby’s Changing Stations’ the first trailer to Affiliate Links’ debut solo album ‘Enough Light’ (available via We Are Busy Bodies from 9th September). A yearning lo-fi jangle with a Go-Betweens flourish that captured the memorabilia of indie-kid days gone by, it was a song that looked back but carried you …
Premiere – Affiliate Links previews debut album ‘Enough Light’ with ‘Baby’s Changing Stations’ – heartfelt indie memories revisited and revived.
After a decade with Toronto based post-rock noise-stretchers ‘Fresh Snow’, Bradley Davis a.k.a. Affiliate Links recognised the need to re-frame things. Looking back to this time last year he recalls feeling “…compelled to make music filled with words and free from the red tape that can go along with a band”. Taking advantage of the …
Album Review: Roots – Deeper Roots: a long last South African soul jazz reviver.
Continuing their excavation of the works of Almon Memela, one of those unheralded dynamos of seventies South African music, We Are Busy Bodies have just released ‘Deeper Roots’ by ROOTS (available from 13th May). If you picked up on the review of Memela’s soul-jazz classic ‘Funky Africa’ in Backseat Mafia last week you’ll already have …
Album Review: Almon Memela – Funky Africa : a South African soul-jazz classic revived.
Call off the search! The chroniclers at We Are Busy Bodies continue their significant excavation of the rich seams of seventies South African jazz with the release of Almon Memela’s ‘Funky Africa’ (remastered by Noah Mintz and available from May 6th). This classic slab of soul-jazz rare groove, hotly pursued by crate diggers, turntablists and …
Album Review: Pat Matshikiza and Kippie Moketsi – Tshona! : uplifting classic South African jazz from the 70s.
Those inspired curators at We Are Busy Bodies continue to astound with this latest release in their expanding achive from the seminal South African jazz label As Shams/The Sun. Pat Matshikiza and Kippie Moketsi’s ‘Tshona!’ (available from 15th April) was originally issued in 1975 and produced by label boss Rashid Vally, a pivotal figure in …
Premiere: Michael Scott Dawson releases new visuals for the beautiful ambient soundscape of Campestral
Canadian sound artist and multi-instrumentalist Michael Scott Dawson is building towards the release of his new album Music For Listening, out April 8th via We Are Busy Bodies. from it, he’s releasing the second single taken from it, Campestral, and we’re delighted to be able to premiere it right here on Backseat Mafia today. Following …
Premiere: Michael Scott Dawson releases his love letter to skateboarding with visuals to the ambient guitar work, Two Solitudes
Out in April is the new album from sound artist and multi-instrumentalist Michael Scott Dawson, Music For Listening, out via We Are Busy Bodies. Inspired by a conversation with his 95 year old grandmother, and her observations of birds outside her window. This led Dawson to investigate recordings made several years ago which featured birdsong, …
Album Review: Vis-A-Vis – The Best Of Vis-A-Vis In Congo Style
Remember those stellar studio bands of the late sixties/early seventies – The Meters, The Section, The Wrecking Crew, Muscle Shoals – defining the sound of where a record was made and fuelling the hit factories. Switch over to West Africa and you find the same thing, the tightest groups of session players at the source …
See: The kosmiche of New Age Doom & Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry’s ‘Step In Space’: a final, collaborative dose from the dub genius
LIKE his unparalleled predecessor Sun Ra, much-missed dub legend Lee “Scratch” Perry always claimed he came from outer space – and who are we to argue? Let’s hope he’s returned to whichever planet is was that deigned to let him spend a little while upping the weeeerd ante down here on Planet Earth. Taken from …